If you believe the mythology of these things, Neil Kinnock sunk Labour's chances of victory in the 1992 General Election at a rally in Sheffield where he uttered the deathless soundbite "We're alright!" The rally - which fittingly took place on April Fool's Day - is notable as being just about the last time in British political history that a politician ever made the mistake of showing spontaneous feeling at a conference podium. But the sentiment was at least positive.
Two days out from the EU Referendum, Sordel is ready to capitulate to the prevailing logic. Cameron has me convinced. The Department of Trade & Industry can't negotiate trade agreements. Countries investing in Britain are not after anything that we have to trade; they are primarily interested in our access to the Continental marketplace. Membership of NATO and the United Nations counts for nothing, and if you're pining for The Commonwealth, pine on Grandad. Britain cannot make it on its own, and certainly not with any of the likely potential pilots at the helm.
And this isn't sarcasm.
There is, admittedly, a positive argument for remaining in the EU. We're better inside helping shape the decisions than outside suffering the consequences of them. This affords the UK to effect genuine global change through multilateral action with European partners irrespective of their frankly waning power and relevance. None of that is wrong; people join exclusive clubs for a reason and they don't give up membership on a whim or without qualms.
But the positive logic is as nothing compared with the negative logic of staying in Europe. The UK didn't need an EU to shape international affairs in the past, but then it had leaders who would not have dreamed of devoting months of their time fighting a completely unnecessary referendum on the basis of the UK's fundamental weakness.
This is not party political sniping: Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems (whatever happened to them?) are as one on this point. It can't be done, and - if it could - we can't do it.
Maybe some other UK with some other leader. Not this one. Not with Cameron, or Corbyn, or (let me check my notes) Tim Farron. Not with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage or Michael Gove either, lest you think that Sordel dreams of princes across the sea.
If you can't trust your politicians, Brexit is too big a risk to take, which is why I cannot vote for it.
Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Slogan, and the slogan for these times is this: "We're All Wrong."
Showing posts with label Michael Gove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Gove. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Some Guy Behind The Editor's Desk
Sordel learnt a valuable lesson from the example of Jonathan Aitken.
For those too young (or perhaps too old) too remember him, Aitken was one of what seemed at the time a great many Conservative politicians forced to resign by various scandals last century. This one is rather more interesting to us today than some of the others because it involved the Saudis, but what people tend to remember is not the scandal itself but the speech that Aitken made when embarking upon a catastrophic libel action that landed him in prison for perjury:
If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it, I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.
And the lesson that Sordel learnt from this episode is that the clearest evidence available to us that someone is a scoundrel is the grandiloquence with which they appeal to high principle.
At which one turns to Michael Gove.
Gove - whom under normal circumstances one would have dismissed as a pompous nitwit perhaps shortly before he opened his mouth but certainly shortly thereafter - has managed to hold much of the country thrall beneath his mesmeric, piscine glassiness during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education. He is rather like an unsettling child who, having been liberated from the need to blink by genetic abnormality, settles all arguments with a staring competition.
"Good fellow, Gove" we mutter nervously, leaving him in the classroom at break to eat flies and cogitate on future improvements to the English Baccalaureate.
His appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday revealed, however, the man's Inner Aitken as he proceeded to lecture Lord Leveson about the Freedom of the Press and admonish him pre-emptively for seeking to curtail it in any way.
Gove (like Aitken as it happens) is a former journalist who finds himself on the Westminster side of a revolving door. Presumably having been rendered giddy by passing through it, Gove seemed to have forgotten himself completely, regarding his testimony as an opportunity to bloviate insufferably in a manner that is fairly characterised by Esther Addley in The Guardian.
Clearly his dizziness was infectious as well, since it was clear from the tone of voice employed by both Robert Jay and his judicial master that their eyes were rolling almost as persistently as Gove's vainglorious oratory. Go watch the full performance if you can find the time.
Clearly such a man is not to be contained in my Promethean nutshell: like the Press itself he strides free of such bounds bearing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play.
Still: it might be appropriate for him to remember that those editors of whom he speaks in tones befitting deities did all put their trousers on one leg at a time. The Press is all very well in abstract, but in particular some of them might prove to be the sort of odious tick who would presume to lecture a judge on his public duties for the sake of striking a public pose.
In such cases it is surely justified to extend the right to freedom of speech only grudgingly and with scant reason for celebration.
For those too young (or perhaps too old) too remember him, Aitken was one of what seemed at the time a great many Conservative politicians forced to resign by various scandals last century. This one is rather more interesting to us today than some of the others because it involved the Saudis, but what people tend to remember is not the scandal itself but the speech that Aitken made when embarking upon a catastrophic libel action that landed him in prison for perjury:
If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it, I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.
And the lesson that Sordel learnt from this episode is that the clearest evidence available to us that someone is a scoundrel is the grandiloquence with which they appeal to high principle.
At which one turns to Michael Gove.
Gove - whom under normal circumstances one would have dismissed as a pompous nitwit perhaps shortly before he opened his mouth but certainly shortly thereafter - has managed to hold much of the country thrall beneath his mesmeric, piscine glassiness during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education. He is rather like an unsettling child who, having been liberated from the need to blink by genetic abnormality, settles all arguments with a staring competition.
"Good fellow, Gove" we mutter nervously, leaving him in the classroom at break to eat flies and cogitate on future improvements to the English Baccalaureate.
His appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday revealed, however, the man's Inner Aitken as he proceeded to lecture Lord Leveson about the Freedom of the Press and admonish him pre-emptively for seeking to curtail it in any way.
Gove (like Aitken as it happens) is a former journalist who finds himself on the Westminster side of a revolving door. Presumably having been rendered giddy by passing through it, Gove seemed to have forgotten himself completely, regarding his testimony as an opportunity to bloviate insufferably in a manner that is fairly characterised by Esther Addley in The Guardian.
Clearly his dizziness was infectious as well, since it was clear from the tone of voice employed by both Robert Jay and his judicial master that their eyes were rolling almost as persistently as Gove's vainglorious oratory. Go watch the full performance if you can find the time.
Clearly such a man is not to be contained in my Promethean nutshell: like the Press itself he strides free of such bounds bearing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play.
Still: it might be appropriate for him to remember that those editors of whom he speaks in tones befitting deities did all put their trousers on one leg at a time. The Press is all very well in abstract, but in particular some of them might prove to be the sort of odious tick who would presume to lecture a judge on his public duties for the sake of striking a public pose.
In such cases it is surely justified to extend the right to freedom of speech only grudgingly and with scant reason for celebration.
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